Avoiding History
by indelicatedelay
Summary: The Doctor is always running from consequence. A future Doctor, plus Martha, Jack Harkness, Donna and others. This was written directly post-S4 so is now entirely non-canonical. Rating for mature themes and character death.


He stares at Lucy Saxon on the CCTV screen. She's in good accommodation by UNIT prison standards - at least, she's not in a concrete box with nothing but a mattress and a bucket. She's got a bed and a small bathroom jutting off from the room, although the door to it is locked. She's even got a little armchair.

Martha sees his eyes linger on the locked door. "She tried to hang herself in the shower." She says it matter-of-factly but her eyes betray that she can still feel pity for a woman who danced as the world burned. "So it's kept secured unless she has a chaperone."

Lucy's hair is loose and she has no makeup but still wears rings. They're too loose on her fingers now. She's torn her standard issue red-orange jumpsuit into an ugly parody of an evening dress and it hangs from bony shoulders. She stares at nothing, moves a little, then stares at nothing again.

"How long has she been here?" he asks Martha, and it comes out of his mouth in a casual tone that he couldn't have predicted.

She raises her eyebrows. "Are you getting a bit slow in your old age? Forgotten where you landed? It's been four years on my timeline. Doctor…" Martha hesitates and doesn't look him in the eye even when she finally speaks again. "I think you should go and see her. Talk to her."

"There's nothing I can do," he says bluntly. She's not one of his fixed points but he can sense every possibility for her and they all end badly. "What are your lot doing for her?"

"My lot? I got transferred, you know that. Unless you're talking in general species terms again. You've got to stop doing that, it makes you look like a raving egotist."

"Duly noted."

"I came down from Cardiff to do a full monthly check up - weight, blood work, the whole lot. I'm the only one she trusts with a needle. To be honest, it's not looking good. I'm pushing for some more attention. She's got appointments with a psychologist once a week and a monthly one with a psychiatrist so he can review her medication, and I had to fight for that."

"See, that's what you need to do. They know more than me. Well, in that area anyway. Sort of. Well, no. No-one actually knows more than me. What do they say?"

"That's confidential," she says with a not-really-a-smile that clearly says "except when it comes to you, because you're essentially omniscient and everybody hates it."

"Oh, go on."

"She doesn't feel much in the way of remorse, not for obeying the Master or for betraying him. She usually hates him, but not because of what he did to humanity, or to my family." The conflict of interests is obvious in this moment, there's an angry look on Martha's face. "Only because of what he did to her. But sometimes she seems to miss him and thinks shooting him was the right thing to do because he didn't want to travel with you."

That stings a bit, he thinks to himself. The Master, king of self-preservation and outsmarting death, had preferred the idea of possibly dying forever than being under his control. Of course, he had come back. He always did. But he hadn't KNOWN he would.

"Is that everything, sir?"

"Don't call me sir. And yes."

"I was mostly joking. You look even younger, it's kind of crazy." She sighs. "Not like me. Okay then. Goodbye, Doctor."

"I'll see you around, Mrs Milligan."

"That's DOCTOR Milligan to you."

***

The display of the TARDIS declares he is in Cardiff, Wales, Earth, et cetera, in 2013. It psychically and almost physically hurts to look at Jack Harkness and it always will but he can ignore it if he tries hard enough. And he does owe him a quick visit. It's been too long on his own personal timeline, and Jack had mentioned a visit in the 2010s when the Doctor last saw him in 2094.

It doesn't take long to find him now he knows where that base of his is. The TARDIS looks as comical as ever standing in the middle of Roald Dahl Plass, but humans (and indeed most entities he has encountered) are remarkably good at not noticing things they don't consider their business. He briefly considers poking the invisible lift but decides it would be rude to literally drop in, and the fabled pteradon from the Old Days would probably get antsy. Tourist centre it is, then.

The sign says closed and the door is locked but a quick blast with the sonic screwdriver fixes that problem. There's no-one at the desk and he frowns slightly before pressing the bell. The complete and utter lack of response bothers him, so he just messes with the doors again and wanders in.

The pteradon is there but it doesn't swoop or screech. It just makes a sad, keening noise. He raises his eyebrows and gazes upon Torchwood Three.

There's a vast bloodstain next to the fountain, fresh and untouched apart from the trail of a body being pulled from it, and Jack's sitting alone with tear stains on his face.

Oh. Very, very bad timing.

He briefly considers doing a runner but even though Jack hasn't looked away from the floor the way he's tensed up suggests he knows the Doctor is there.

"Hello, Captain."

"Hello, Doctor." He doesn't look very surprised. This is the first time Jack's seen this regeneration in his timeline but he still recognises him. The bond of the immortal.

"What's happened here?" He gestures vaguely at the blood and wonders where everyone else is.

"I don't want to talk about it." No eye-contact.

"Where's your team."

"Gone home. What's left of them. I said I don't want to talk about it. Someone I love died today. I'm not in the mood for this." Jack's staccato sentences are full of anger.

"They all die, Jack."

"I know."

It makes him think of the prophecies about the Face of Boe, tales of wanderers without homes, and for a moment he can almost believe that it's Jack's destiny. He wonders if someday, perhaps in a regeneration's time, he'll meet a Jack somewhere in the far flung constellations and distant days who'll be part-way between handsome hero and giant head in a jar, and truly know that it was Jack calling him "old friend", Jack warning him cryptically at the end of the almost-eternity that Rose gave him about Yana, Saxon, the Master. Maybe he's seen Jack before he knew him and didn't recognise him while his status in time moved from fact to legend.

He's completely sure that Jack knows as well as anyone that they can't go back and change anything, stop what has already happened, but the look on his face and the faint telepathic vibes that get through his significant psychic barriers suggest that he wants to, causality be damned. "I tried..." Jack's face creases up in a frown. "I kissed him back to life once, a long time ago. But this time he just kept bleeding out and there was nothing I could do."

He has no idea who this could be - when you live on such a grand scale of time as he and Jack do then Jack is always in love and always being hurt - but he thinks asking "Did I ever meet him?" would probably be tactless. So he settles for "What was he like?", which is probably just as bad but it's too late now.

Jack looks wistful, almost smiling. "Cute. Clever. Sarcastic. Welsh. Ordinary but completely and utterly amazing. No-one's ever loved me like that, so unconditionally and with absolutely no reason to."

The Doctor feels uncomfortable at that level of honesty and can't resist the need to be glib. "Oh, the guy with the suit. He didn't seem to like me much, did he?"

"No, he didn't. Got a bit jealous. It was kind of hot." Jack doesn't put much heart into it, but nevertheless it's a relief to hear him throwing around a little innuendo. "Dammit. I can't deal with this. I just can't."

"Come with me," he says quickly. "Just for a bit. It'd speed up the healing process and all that. I can drop you off right here, right where you left. Your team wouldn't have to know."

Jack looks like he's considering it for one brief moment then stands up. There's blood on his shirt. "No. I won't run away from this. I won't make myself forget him."

He nods. "Fair enough. I'll be seeing you, then."

"Yeah."

He leaves Captain Jack Harkness sitting alone in his room full of blood with a wailing pterodactyl, and makes his way back to the TARDIS.

***

He stands on the opposite side of the road from the Nobles' home, half-hidden behind a battered old Volkswagen, watching and waiting. He sees a flash of red hair in a window, hears children laughing from the school nearby. It's nearly three. She'll be collecting her kid soon.

He leaves.

It would kill her to really, truly look at him and know (no matter that he looks superficially different, he's the same man inside and no-one could ever doubt it) and sometimes he thinks it would kill him too.

So he runs, and he never, ever looks back. Because that's how he lives. That's how he always has done.


End file.
